[Zope] Save Zope (and me) before Citrix!

[Jaroslav Lukesh]

: Odesílatel: Dylan Reinhardt <zope@dylanreinhardt.com>
: The trick is not to bill it that way.  Bill out cost of ownership, not
: parts and labor.

: Let's say you could deploy a just-as-good solution in half the time
: using Zope.  Having stipulated that such a solution is worth $20,000 to
: the client, you maintain that price.  Now you've got:
: 
: Licensing fees ........... $     0
: Labor ..(100 hours @ 100)  $10,000
: Pure profit .............. $10,000
: 
: But on the client's invoice it says:
: 
: Excellent software ....... $20,000

That is problem with tax. Because software is owned (by invoice as in your
example), so cost of OpenSource ownership is higher than M$ with your
example. If cost of software is zero, then cost of service hours does not
have any negative aspect to tax and cost of company. Because from cost of
company (ie., sum of all things that company own) is calculated tax.
 
: > But I will try to push my chief to selling solutions from me, not
service
: > hours. Chief sells mainly service hours (he have simple calculator:
much
: > time = much money).
: 
: See if his calculator does this function:
: 
: Same price - lower overhead = more money

I was talk about this problem with our accountant, but she does not say me
anythink positive. Because why peoples that serving Microsoft solutions
with very $$$ trainings and certificates may have less money per hour than
one people without many costly and acredited certificates?

I think that it is the core of the problem. Maintaining of good level of
human relations. Dont forget, I am from Czech, not from western democracy
country. Communists thinking and equalitarian will here live for long time.

Ech... but so - I spend time at my company and try to save some money, then
I buy leased line to internet with server and try to make my own business
with Zope.

For example - by allowing to access customer to WYSIVIG manage pages, I was
spend about 2 hours together with finding of right method to client's data
conversion/formatting, writing documentation and online training plus some
DTML scripts. I say to chief that it may sell this "access" for 10x more
than my cost per hour. He says me that client know how many hours I was
spend on this solution, so client will not want to pay more than in service
agreement is defined.

: Support contracts also work better if you charge a monthly support fee
: instead of billing out incidents hourly.  Moving away from hourly
: billing for support tends to increase client satisfaction a lot, too. 
: The easier a product is to support, the more support can become a profit
: center instead of a cost to avoid. 

Absolutelly great idea, but my chief have in 180 degree different. It is
due to transfer liability for M$ software to client side, not our side,
which will if client will pay monthly constant fee. Damned Microsoft!

I will try to speak with chief about it.

Many thanks to all for great ideas.

J. Lukesh